Archive for November, 2016

If you are considering adding carpet to your home, you need to read this. Many areas of the home can benefit from the warmth and comfort of carpet. This read will help you decide if carpet is the right choice for your home and family!

Carpet can help keep a home warmer in the colder months. It provides a level of comfort that is great for sitting on the floor and playing with children. Small children in the household will benefit from carpet when they are crawling or just learning to walk. This material is soft when little ones fall down, it also can prevent less injuries from falling.

Not only can children benefit from carpet. Elderly people can get better traction when walking on carpet. They too can be better protected if they slip and fall on this material. Carpet is a good choice when a home has individuals that have difficulty walking.

Allergens, dust and pollens that are floating around in the air are actually trapped into carpet fibers. Once the carpet has been vacuumed those particles are removed. This material is a great option for individuals that are prone to air borne allergens.

Buffering sound is one of carpet’s best qualities. The sound is absorbed by carpet fibers and the carpet pad beneath. This makes it a great choice for homes with multiple levels, as the sound does not travel as easily from one floor to another. Using carpet on stairs makes foot traffic less noisy too.

There is no need to worry about spills and stains. Many different stain resistant treatments can be applied to carpets in order to prevent stains from soaking in. Before you have carpet installed ask us about stain resistant treatment options. This is a must for families with children, pets or both!

With all the benefits and varieties of carpet, surely there is an area in your home that will benefit from carpet. Ask us about any questions, concerns or needs you may have. We will be able to help you decide what carpet is right for you and your family!

Quartzite is one of the most frequently mislabeled materials in natural stone. Cut and polished it is often mistaken for granite or marble. Left in its natural cleft state, many people confuse it with slate. This metamorphic stone does share traits with both marble and slate, but it’s made primarily of quartz that has undergone a dramatic transformation through heat and pressure. Therefore, it’s actually more durable and resistant to scratching and stains than either marble or slate. If you’re considering a slate floor for your home, but are uncertain if the stone you have picked is slate or quartzite, take a look at a few general characteristics of both to figure it out.

Slate

Slate was originally made up of layers and layers of compressed mud. It naturally clefts or slices itself along these cleft lines, and if you hold a piece of ungauged slate on its edge, you can often see the lines or grooves that these layers create.

Slate can be found in many colors from gray to green to purple, and many slates are often made up of several different colors in one. It is not uncommon to find a piece of slate that is different colors on either side, in fact.

When slate spalls, or flakes, shortly after installation, it does so in thin layers. The stone therefore may be dusty or muddy after being washed and little pieces may break off. The stone itself is fairly smooth, however, despite the clefts and valleys in the surface.

Quartzite

Being made of compressed quartz, quartzite is a lot more sparkly than slate. In the light it will often glitter like it is made of diamond dust. To the touch, ungauged or natural cleft quartzite may feel rough to the touch, similar to the surface of an emery board.

Quartzite can also be very dramatic in its coloring, with two popular colors – Desert Gold and Moss Green – actually coming from two sides of the same quarry.

When quartzite spalls after installation, it will appear to be covered in fine grit. Some people may describe it as being sugary as the tiny granules break off. Like slate, this does stop after a few months, but it’s less likely to be dusty or muddy during this time.

Most bathrooms incorporate some type of either tub or shower into the design. These are usually enclosures that may be separate from the rest of the bathroom and are partitioned off either by a shower door or a curtain. As bathroom sizes continue to grow, however, many people are choosing to use other types of showers in their bathrooms, including the barrier free or walk-in style shower. These open areas are often placed at one end of the bathroom away from the rest of the fixtures, and may or may not use any splash panels, guards, or other types of partitions or screens. The water is allowed to flow out toward the rest of the room; the position of the other fixtures ensures that they are far enough away to prevent them from getting wet. This type of shower installation is growing in popularity, and often leaves homeowners wondering how they can fit one into their own bathroom scheme. There are a few considerations you need to make for the room as a whole to best fit one in.

Sloped Flooring

Because there is no curb or other separation between the shower area and the rest of the floor, the entire floor needs to be able to conform to a slope toward the drain. Therefore, ideally the floor of the whole bathroom should be 2-inches in size or smaller. Using larger tiles on the floor can be done in the rest of the bathroom if you want to change size as you get closer to the shower area, but to prevent cracking and other problems, the area of the floor that does slope needs to be mosaic in size.

Splash Panels

If you have the space to position the shower area far enough away from everything else that nothing will get wet no matter how many body sprays you use, then you don’t need to worry about splash guards or panels. If your bathroom is smaller, however, you can still use this type of shower with a small fixed panel just next to the sprays. This prevents the water from escaping, while preserving the openness of the overall shower.